//------------------------------//
// Chapter 6 
// Story: The Bonds of Eternity 
// by Wheller 
//------------------------------//


Chapter 6


Princess Celestia had risen late this morning, she was tired, and she was not looking forward to another day of bickering between world leaders. If she could have, she would have picked them all up, and stuffed them back in their ships and sent them on home, but no, Luna wasn’t going to let her do that.

Celestia crawled out of bed and went into her washroom, turning on the water at the sink and splashing some of it onto her face.

‘Not sleeping well, are we Celestia?’ a tinny, metal voice called out from behind her, causing the princess to jump in surprise. She opened her mouth and was about ready to call for her guards when the voice continued. 'Don’t even bother, call for the guards and I’ll be gone before the words even escape your lips'.

Celestia turned around slowly and looked at her ‘guest’ and was surprised to discover that it wasn’t even a pony at all. ‘A robot?’ Celestia asked. ‘There have been no robots in Equestria in nearly a thousand years!’

‘I can understand why you would think that. Unfortunately, you are stupid for thinking it. Your little pogrom against technology hasn’t worked nearly as well as you hoped. I, and the Cultus Mechanicus should have made that perfectly clear to you’.

‘I will not stand here and be insulted in my own bedroom!’ Celestia said hotly. ‘Who are you!? You have a lot to answer for!’

‘Stupid indeed. Is it not obvious to you? That I should disappear one day without even the slightest trace? I really wouldn’t have been that hard to find if you had really wanted to’.

Celestia looked over the robot intensely for a moment. ‘Emerald?’ she asked.

‘Nice to see you too, bitch, hope you enjoy today, because today is the last day that you are ever going to be in power’.

Celestia was taken aback by the words of her friend who she had thought to be long dead. ‘Emerald... What happened to you?’

‘Oh you know, the usual story, filly gets raped in a dark alleyway in the middle of the night, gets pregnant, has foal, is forced to abandon said foal on some stranger’s doorstep because princess of the universe decides that she is going to destroy everything that Equestrian society needs to prosper and puts herself in stasis so that she can save the world, not that you would care about any of that, all you care about is what you want, always has been, always will be’.

‘Emerald... I... I don’t know what to say...’ Celestia said, while the voice through the spritebot’s loudspeakers was artificial, monotone, and without emotion, she could tell that Emerald Sparkle was angry. ‘I just tried to do what was right...’

‘Oh, you did what was right, right for you. Damn you Celestia, do you know how close we were? We were THIS close to civil nuclear power. Clean, cheap energy for everypony! And it wouldn’t have stopped there. A thousand years went by, and we went back in time, only to get back to the place that we were at. A thousand years wasted because of you. Well, enjoy this day, because it will be the last one you see. Because when we meet again, I will kill you’.

‘Emerald...’ Princess Celestia said, however, the spritebot disappeared into thin air, and was nowhere to be found. Celestia glanced around, making sure that she wasn’t hallucinating or anything. Emerald Sparkle, her childhood friend, was not only still alive, but had played a part all throughout Equestrian history.

Celestia knew that if Emerald Sparkle was indeed still alive, then she was sitting on a stockpile of some of the most incredibly dangerous technology from the Gaian Era. Celestia knew instantly what needed to happen. For the good of pony kind, for the good of Equestria, maybe even for the good of the entire world, she needed to kill Emerald Sparkle.

...

Twilight and Rainbow Dash had returned to the Library with Applejack, Fluttershy, Rarity, and Pinkie Pie. Along with Monty Ulan, who had reluctantly come along with them, Twilight pushed open the door to the Library and they all stepped inside.

Octavia immediately noticed the earth pony stallion. ‘You!’ she cried out at him.

‘Crap!’ he cried back. ‘You didn’t tell me she was here!’

Twilight let out a sigh and stepped between the two of them. ‘Listen, I don’t know what this is all about, but we really don’t have time to worry about it right now’.

Monty nodded. ‘She’s right, and we’re going to need everypony we can get. Detective Inspector Auditore, tell you what, after this is all over? I’ll come back to Manehattan with you, and I won’t even put up a fight, and I promise I won’t try to escape’.

Octavia glanced over the earth pony stallion; she looked him up and down to make sure that he was on the level. ‘Very well’, she said finally. ‘I suppose I can live with that’.

‘Aww, everypony is finally getting along!’ Vinyl Scratch said with a grin.

‘Speaking of everypony’, Trixie said. ‘Lyra and Bon Bon went outside a while ago and have yet to come back, did any of you see them on your way back inside?’

Everypony glanced around; most of them hadn’t noticed that the pair had gone. Twilight Sparkle frowned; this was exactly not what they needed now. They needed to be together, not apart. They were rapidly approaching the end of this stretch on the Long Road. Of that, they were sure. Now? Now it was just waiting for someone to make the first move.

...

Bon Bon sat on the stairs outside her and Lyra’s flat, tears streamed from her eyes and dripped onto the ground. No matter how many times Bon Bon wiped her eyes, more and more would just come. Bon Bon couldn’t believe it had come to this, though, the more she thought about it, the more, she figured, that this would have happened eventually. She couldn’t have kept this a secret forever. She knew that, but, Bon Bon knew that this had to have been the worst time for this to happen.

Bon Bon knew what she was, who she was. She and Lyra together were the Bond of Fraternity. The fact that the metal voice had taken steps to deliberately separate them meant one thing and one thing only. They would need to use them.

Bon Bon thought back to the day that she and Lyra had first met, that day in the rain. Bon Bon was a candy maker by trade, she had become well known even as far as Canterlot, and while she was a one mare operation, a sweetshop in Canterlot had put in an order that was paying extremely well, when the letter of the offer showed up at her doorstep, offering her a hundred pounds for her effort.

Bon Bon had spent the entire night filling the order and had trotted off to Canterlot, despite the fact that it was scheduled to rain. She took an umbrella with her and dragged the entire order up the mountain, on her own hooves. (The railroad tracks connecting the Central Canterlot Province station and Canterlot had not been completed yet. In fact, they had only recently become operational.) Bon Bon had spent the entire day walking in the rain, but eventually despite every obstacle in her way made it to the sweet shop in Canterlot and walked out a hundred pounds richer. That was enough to keep her from working for several months... of course, Bon Bon loved making candy, and Sugarcube Corner back home in Ponyville always had a regular order ever couple of weeks. Pinkie Pie had not even come to town at this point yet, so Sugarcube Corner was limited in the number of things that they made themselves.

That was when Bon Bon had seen her. Sitting on a park bench looking all sad and pathetic across from the sweetshop was a seafoam green unicorn pony, sitting and letting the rain fall on her head. Such a sight broke Bon Bon’s heart; she trotted over to her and held her umbrella over her head.

The pony who Bon Bon would eventually know as Lyra looked up at her and smiled. Bon Bon discovered that Lyra had had left her parents home with practically no possessions of her own, and hardly sixpence to her name, and Bon Bon had pretty much dragged her back to Ponyville with her. She could hardly leave the poor thing there in the rain. Of course, Bon Bon hardly knew what she was getting into. Lyra was a lovely pony to be sure, though she was a little silly, but Lyra was a fun loving pony with a bright personality, even though she had a few eccentric qualities to her. Bon Bon remembered the time that she had taken to sitting on the park benches with her back leaning against the rest. Bon Bon remembered the memory fondly, and couldn’t help but smile. Bon Bon’s crying began to intensify. She needed Lyra; she didn’t know what would do without her.

Bon Bon looked up, something felt... odd, then it hit, the ground began to shake. Bon Bon fell from the steps and collapsed onto the ground. Something was happening.

...

Emerald Sparkle was ready, years of preparing for this moment, and all her hard work was about to pay off. It was time for the EPMB to return to the outside world. In secret, she had been assembling combat model spritebots, and more importantly a special kind of robot that nopony had ever seen before. A highly mobile robot tracked wheels armed with EPMB’s special 6mm submachine and a grenade launcher for weapons. Most distinctively, these robots had television screens on the front of them. Each one displaying an image identical to that displayed on the EPMB Mainframe terminal.

It was time, EPMB was returning to the world.

...

Twilight and Co. had exited the Library when they felt the ground begin to shake.

‘Earthquake!’ Rainbow Dash cried out.

‘Impossible!’ Twilight called out. ‘There aren’t any fault lines for hundreds of kilometres!’

They all looked down the street towards Sugarcube Corner. Mister and Missus Cake were running for their lives from the building as it came crashing down. The ground around the demolished building began to crack as massive steel doors raised open from the ground below.

What seemed like endless amounts of Spritebots flew out of the EPMB missile silo.

‘I thought Emerald Sparkle said she was running out of spritebots’, Fluttershy said.

Vinyl Scratch gave the canary yellow Pegasus an uncharacteristically stoic look ‘Clearly, she lied’.